Richard Wagner (1813-1883)

The 19th Century
Presentation 4 of 13

Richard Wagner (1813-1883)
The New Art Form of the Romantic Cosmic Knight
Presented by Roger Weir
Tuesday, December 27, 1983

Transcript:
(00:00):
The date is December 27th, 1983. This is the fourth lecture in a series of lectures by Roger, where on a 19th century, tonight's lecture is entitled Wagner who lived 18, 13, 1883, the new art form of the romantic cosmic night.
(00:21):
This is the fourth lecture in this series on the 19th century. And this series in the 19th century, as many of you know, is embedded in a four year series that we've been working on trying to reestablish the chronological. Mystica the way in which history has moved person to person rather than by political triumph for military disaster. And because of this, I have been reluctant to draw lines. Ideational connecting the influence of the people, settling just for the bear biographies and achievements of the individuals and leaving the implications to you yourselves through the lectures, through the cassettes and so forth with a tremendous interest in our subject tonight this year being the Centenery of VOC nurse death, there is so much new material and almost everywhere that I looked in the research, I found two or three volumes on almost every subject, uh, aspect. I had very little time to review most of the new material I have for you. Several volumes that I think worthwhile. One of them just published, uh, in the last few years by Cambridge university press called the Wagner companion. It's in paperback. This was published in 1979 and it, uh, he has a compendium of about 500 pages and is a very good single paperback volume. I think it sells reasonably for about $10, which is getting to be a reasonable these days.
(02:28):
The two editors are Peter Burbage and Richard Sutton Wagner's works are largely untranslated into English. One would like to have good English translations. The translations made early in the 20th century, uh, by a man named Ellis are just not very adequate at all. There is a very excellent translation of the ring of the Nebula. Andrew Porter did this in 1976, 77, and it's published in a paper back for about six 95, and this is a tremendous volume. And if you decide that you'd like to, uh, explore vokner and the whole import of these lectures is to display for you the excellence and charm of all these thinkers. We have seen for instance, so far that most of the early powerful ideas in our contemporary civilization are rooted firmly in the 19th century and almost all of the major figures. There are misunderstood. We are given pastiches instead of living traditions, we have, for instance, already discovered that the contemporary views of Karl marks are very Marxian, but not very much in keeping with Karl Marx as a thinker, we've discovered that the origins of liberal capitalism in Jeremy Bentham are quite different from the way in which they were developed by the later interpreters and second rate thinkers like Ricardo and mill.
(04:19):
We discovered, uh, already to our surprise that in fact, Herbert Spencer, who is largely portrayed as a spokesman for the British empire on the conservative, uh, uh, mentality of that whole genre held great surprises for us and his intelligence and his assessment of human capacity and the way in which history and civilization have intertwined to make a tradition, which is now readable as a second nature. So it will come to no surprise to you to discover that Richard Wagner is also quite misunderstood. It is in fact, a very difficult presentation to deliver to you. I would like to have had at least an hour's worth of musical selections for you. Okay. I was unable to do this. So I would like to give you a few hints as to what I might have used for you. I think in terms of initial experiences, one is perhaps advise to go to an orchestral selection of Wagner to tune the ear by the ear.
(05:54):
We also will come to understand the feelings, the tone, those of you who were here last lecture series for the lecture on Mozart, realize what a tremendous opening of human possibility. The development of Mozart's music was not so much a revolution, but a complete radical reworking of the whole field of feeling. And we are having to deliver this lecture, not having done a lecture on Beethoven who was eminently important for understanding Wagner and the transition from Mozart to vokner is only possible because of the genius of Beethoven. He will be presented in the lecture series on the age of revolution in may, June and July at the philosophic research society, I had to extract certain individuals like Napoleon and Jefferson, Shelley Garrett, to Beethoven and put them into a different, uh, lecture series. Also Schopenhauer will be in that series. Well, end the series on the age of revolution.
(07:10):
So we present Wagner tonight, not having had, yeah, in terms of actual sequence, two of the most important influences on him, the philosophy of Shelton har and the music of Beethoven, we have had 300 half years ago, a lecture on East skillets. And for those who are collecting the cassettes and have them available, the lecture on East kilos would be well to be reviewed before you listened to the Wagner lecture. Looking ahead just a little bit vokner by the age of 13, had enough Greek to translate several books of the Odyssey for himself, the Greek, this wasn't it achievement because there was a Latin based educational system in effect at that time. And the ability to find one's way in Greek was quite unusual at this time. Homer in fact, was quite important. Uh, scholar named, uh, Wolf had discovered in the late 1780s, early 1790s, that by philological analysis, one could actually come to the conclusion that there was no such person as Homer, but they were collections of works.
(08:40):
And so the controversy was beginning to rage in the intellectual world. The same thing in hard time studies have revealed on a complex computer philological basis that the premiere atheist bound is perhaps not by East coast, but by some writer who would have lived 50 years later at any rate, the point is that Wagner was a tremendous intellect. And as even a young adolescent was precocious enough to have pursued the study of Greek language in this case in point well enough to have done some translating for himself. The favorite and Greek author of Wagner was Esq us. And in fact, the last day of his life, Hey, from Mark to Cosmo, that this was in fact, the most important, uh, author to him that every year had revealed to him more and more potential when Wagner was born in 1813 in may, the world was quite different from when he died nearly 70 years later in 1883.
(10:02):
And we have already traced through the lecture on marks and the lecture on Spencer that one of the major transitions in the 19th century was in the revolutionary years, 1848 and 1849. And we will see that Wagner plays a very large role in that movement. As a young boy, Wagner apparently was given to private musings by himself and formed very early on assessment of the world, which we would call in psychology today, central version, not so much introvert or extrovert, but blending the two realms together to make an internal bridge to the external world and using materials from the external world to augment the internal bridging so that the central vert is someone who is attempting to build a pattern of life for himself and is using materials from both the inner and outer of resources. He was put in various schools. By the time he was 15, he found himself in a school where the teaching was just repulsive.
(11:37):
The teachers were repulsive the way in which they handled subject matter, even which he liked put him off and vokner began to seriously follow the path of self-education this an important point because it spared him from being ground into the academic dust, which was prevalent in the early 19th century, especially for young boys who were getting a classical education, he was increasingly self aware. And when he went to school, Wagner began to lead an adventurous life. That is to say he began participating in, uh, the kinds of adventures which young men would have. And at the same time schooling himself inside in terms of a musical orientation towards the world. By the time he was 19, he was already capable of writing a piece of music such as, um, the symphony and see it's been referred to by many critics as a ghost production. Nevertheless, it was written and finished at the age of 20. He already had written a short opera, uh, di theme, the fairies, which took a mythological material and he gave it a musical operatic expression.
(13:20):
This was 1833 Wagner seeking to find a place for himself. Fell in love with an actress who was in a company. Her name was Wilhelmina, no, or Mina. And, uh, Wagner began the, uh, devoting himself to being a conductor of this third rate traveling company. He went to several cities, including, uh, Riga up in the areas that are now part of the Soviet union, but were once, uh, parts of, uh, Latvia and Estonia Koenigsberg, uh, was also on the agenda for six years. Wagner attempted to raise this company from a third grade traveling trip to a first rate company. He began a life long characteristic attempt at overspending himself, borrowing and feeding funds and making ideas and making events happen until he exhausted everyone and himself, all of their funds. I think the old thing is one simply cannot make a silk purse out of a sow's ear by 1839 Wagner found himself in a dire condition and was seeking to take himself to Paris in Paris.
(15:01):
He heard for the first time, the orchestration of Hector barely out. And this was a revelation to him, to the sonorous texturing of Berlioz's symphonic style awakened in Wagner and tremendous musical imagination in his mind's ear. He began to hear possibilities for music that he hadn't approached before. And by 1841, he was already at work translating. One of Bulwer Lipton's novels called Brienne Z to an operatic form. And in 1842 [inaudible] was actually produced in Dresden Germany. It was very difficult, uh, opera to put on the lead soprano was called upon to use her voice in a way not traditional. And again, correspondence to Wagner, which we still have. She laments the fact that his genius is so convoluted. And though he may have fame on the horizon for himself, his operas are very difficult to put on. They also, uh, had a mixed, critical reaction.
(16:29):
That is to say some musical critics found Wagner, absolutely stimulating. He was a new, uh, voice musically coming on the scene. There were several composers who spoke very highly of Wagner, but the massive critics saving to turn the thumbs down on him. Wagner had returned from the Northern parts of Europe via Pais ship, and having spent, uh, a week or two on board ship, he got the idea for a mixture of an old sailors story about the flying Dutchman and those who are acquainted with the 70 of the stories of Buckner's operas. The flying Dutchman is condemned to sail the seas forever, unless he can find a pure woman whose undying love for him will redeem him from his curse, uh, um, uh, condition every seven years. He has allowed to land and go in search for his true love. He, of course, in the opera, uh, the dramatic action is always focused in Wagner.
(17:52):
He always, uh, chooses exactly the incidents, which in their resonance will reverberate with the need of meaning to fill out the pattern of dramatic action in the flying Dutchman, which was performed in Dresden in 1843, Wagner received a little less critical acclaim, but he had found that, uh, motive for writing something in the flying Dutchman appealed to him. It was the bringing together of the fantastic world of mythic possibility with the dire ethical conundrums of mortal man. And these aspects brought together, occurred to Wagner to focus much like two eyes would focus a quality of reality about human nature, which he found enticing say the lead Faulkner's next opera was low and grant and low and was produced while he was employed, uh, at the court in Dresden from 1843 to 1849. He was employed there low and grin was widely received. But after the completion of law and grin Wagner suffered a sea change in his personality due to a new perception of possibility in music, what set this up was the revolutionary tone to German society in the late 1840s, Wagner became a tremendously interested in the social aspects of art.
(19:57):
He wrote a document called art and revolution, the future of the artists, um, a number of long essay, which are extremely influential on European culture, especially in the German speaking world. I am not aware of any real adequate translations into English. The six or eight volumes set of translations of Rockness works by Ella. Third are not very acceptable at all. He waters Bachner down so that you don't get the tremendous terseness of ideas with the, uh, uh, development of his prose style. Wagner placed himself squarely on side of revolutionary change in the 1848, 1849, uh, demonstration when, uh, almost every city in Western Europe was suffering the kind of change that happened in the United States in the 1966 67, uh, era, those who, uh, can throw their minds back, realize the kind of turmoil socially that was happening Bogner in this, uh, situation found himself on the outs with authority. And when the revolutionary, uh, thrusts failed just as Mark's had to go into exile to London, angle angles to London, Wagner went and XL to Zurich, Switzerland, and he took with him this brooding sensation that he was on the verge of discovering for himself a whole new way to produce an art form. That is to say he stopped calling his works operas and began calling them musical dramas. The change is not just one in nomenclature, but one in structure and method of comfort composition and in purpose.
(22:15):
Yeah, his basic outlook was that the entirety of a human sensibility should be brought into play in one art form that drama music, dance, costume philosophic, significance, religious aspiration, all of this could be brought to play in one grand great art form that had not been produced in Western Europe when he was searching for some template upon which to base himself. He rediscovered in his mind, the great trilogy of East give us the RSD. His preoccupation with East galas was the way in which religious and mythic themes were brought to play with social purposes to produce a person, a kind of a human bang and whom all of these inner penetrating modes would find a shimmering sense of realization. In fact, Wagner about this time began to, uh, change inside of himself. He began to discover in the writings of Schopenhauer, they beginning indications that there were in fact ways of perceiving human nature that were transcendental in the extreme, that is to say notions of purification and transcendence began to, uh, haunt the structural imagination, uh, Wagner, um, in his questing for a method of, of composition, a large new art form with a structure.
(24:30):
He hit upon the theme of making a trilogy much like East [inaudible] in a new art form, the musical drama like East Gillis who spoke of his own art as saying it work. It was slices from the banquet of Homer. That is to say East keyless based himself on the old Homeric technique of finding the apt image, which could be described in language by a reoccurring deficit, the wine dark sea, rosy fingered, Dawn, and so forth. These became in Wagner's terms, the motives are they leaked motive. And the reoccurring repetition of these leaf motives would aid and the structural tension through the various levels of the musical drama. That is the same leaf motif could be in the spoken verbal part. It could be in the dramatic motion, the dance part, it could be in the musical aspects so that the transition within the overall musical drama art form would be accomplished by the running impulses of the lead.
(25:56):
My chiefs holding all of this dramatic tension would be the central protagonists for Wagner. Then at this time he envisioned a trilogy and in his imagination, the great mythic hero Siegfried appeared to him at the moment of his death, on the image, not just psychologically, but artistically not. And all of this reverberations of sick free death, or occurred to him as the central folk of the entire trilogy. But in order to achieve the comprehension of the moment in artistic terms of sick Freed's death Wagner in his mind, in his imagination, in his composing structure, worked backwards from that indelible fulcrum of humans, anguish.
(27:12):
And as he worked backwards, he realized that in order to make this moment poignant, he would have to tell the story of how sick Fri came to be, how the moment of his death came to be so poignant, how the woman who was his eternal love at the moment of his ruined Hilda, how she came to be. And as he filled in, he realized that in fact, he was going to have to have not a trilogy, but a trilogy with a prayer. And so we have today in the ring cycle for operas, although Wagner in his structural imagination called it a trilogy with a prettier, in fact, when one turns to the ring of the Nebula. Yeah. And the very first, uh, opera Duff's Ryan gold, it is entitled preliminary evening to the festival play. So that's the festival play ran three days. And there was a preliminary evening that also had a fourth part, which was developed and became an opera.
(28:35):
Now, this is interesting because the RS dire as a surviving trilogy had accompanied, they tragic Greek tragic trilogy always required a safer play. We would call it a, uh, a comic play about when one is dealing on the level of Greek tragedy, which is a structural revelation of human propensity and not about content, but about a form. The comedy is not about content, but about form. And so a theater play by East Gillis called Proteus had accompanied the RS Dyer. Unfortunately it was lost in Roman times when these aspects were not valued so highly. Um, so we do not have the Proteus. We have to Seder plays one by one by Sophocles and one by your remedies. There's a translation in penguin classics of these two Seder plays. They also went with, uh, trilogies. So that DAS Rheingold is actually the Seder plate for the trilogy of the other three operas.
(29:51):
So in order to write DAS Rheingold, Wagner attempted to blend in composition the first two operas together. So di Belkery, which was the first of the, um, trilogy, the second of the operas was composed roughly at the same time as DAS Ryan gold. And he had finished the composition of these two works in exile in Zurich. He complained literally about not having anyone to talk to. Uh, the only person that he was, uh, close to at this time was friends list list had, in fact, in 1850 sent letters all over Europe, inviting every one he could think of, of importance in the musical world and put on a performance of Lohengrin that astonished Europe, Wagner himself did not hear a Lohengrin until 11 years later, he complained in a letter to someone who said, everyone in Europe has heard my opera except myself. So he was in exile in Zurich, in Switzerland, the German authorities did not like this.
(31:14):
Uh, well-spoken powerful dynamic, uh, revolutionary in their myths. Uh, so he was exiled. He was banned. He would be recalled by Luke Dick, the second, the wonderful mad King. Some 15 years later, we haven't got to that in exile, struggling with an art form. That was to be new basing himself on the old Greek RS Daya pattern, struggling within himself with a spiritual vision that began to mature. And as it matured produced in Wagner, a sea change in his personality, the code or of the change came after he finished writing dive Valkyrie. And as he began writing Siegfried now, SIG Fried's death had been the core fulcrum image, the archetypal, uh, uh, emergence point at which Faulkner's imagination had, uh, struggled with the whole, uh, composition problem in the first place. As soon as he got to starting the writing of Siegfried, the third opera, then the ring, the second opera in the trilogy, the poignancy, certain observations of Schopenhauer penetrated to him.
(32:43):
And it was not so much Schopenhauer is, uh, you punish Shadek, uh, leanings, you know, an encyclopedia as they call it pessimism. Any, anything that isn't for a filling the stomach is pessimism. The encyclopedia Britannica, uh, refers to, uh, this kind of a philosophy as pessimistic. It's not. So at all, anyone acquainted with, uh, the, uh, Eastern, uh, yoga or Buddhist or dollar thought can see that what was being introduced here was the idea of world negation in terms of a passionate involvement towards a transcendent emergence into a compassionate involvement. So what became for a Wagner crucial was the relation of arrows to AGA pain. And that was an extremely difficult, uh, subject area to talk about. I brought a book by, uh, Anders Nygren. I got a and Eros, which you can take a look at later. And, uh, uh, you can inform yourself just by paging through it of the, uh, tremendous importance and strenuousness of this differentiation in Wagner's spirit.
(34:08):
And we have to talk now of his spirit and not of his mind in Wagner spirit. He was making all of these transitions at the same time. And the difference is noticeable. If you will just play for yourself, two pieces, two selections of music. If you play for yourself, the ride of the Valkyries, and then play for yourself, Forrest murmurs from Siegfried one after the other, you will notice a tremendous change in musical imagination, but music for Wagner had become integrated into a larger art form so that if one takes the opera dive Valkyrie and compares it to the opera, Siegfried one finds a tremendous transition has happened here. In fact, Wagner on the verge of making a tremendous radical discovery yet his own nature was so wrought with the anxiety of creation with the Virgin discovery that he set aside, work on the ring and began to compose a very hearted piece and this, uh, opera, yeah, it was called, uh, the master singers of Nuremberg.
(35:42):
And if you will play for yourself, the overture to the master singers of a Nuremberg, you will find a tremendous, uh, uh, buoyancy. In fact, it is the buoyancy that the cadence of the Odyssey is written. Then there is a wonderful book called the sound of Greek by WB Stanford. And in the back of the book published by university of California, press say their classical lectures sometime in the 1960s, early sixties, w beat Stanford, an old Irish Sage did his best to re-establish the whole Merrick examiner cadences. And on this little record in the back, you'll find selections of classical Greek reconstructed to the best of our ability. If you listened to the selection of the way in which the cadences of the Odyssey run, and then listen to the overture of the Meister singer of Nuremberg, you will detect the similarity if you progress with Stanford's, uh, work and listen to the way in which the cadence of the Iliad is written. You will hear this cadence in Siegfried, especially in the funeral, March and Siegfried funeral March. One of the great dramatic, uh, um, uh, musical experiences of the Western world. It presents not the dirge, all the final ending in the funeral March, but the expectant cadence of someone leaping from the illusory to the real.
(37:37):
And it is this quest for desolving illusion and projecting the reel that became essential to Wagner's mind and, uh, trying to create an art form to express this. He settled upon musical, uh, and verbal and dramatic inner penetration in his musical drama is the way in which to carry this off. When he finished the Meister singers and incidentally, the master singer is a tremendous, uh, uh, plot in itself, historically in the late 12th century, early 13th century. There was in fact they, uh, uh, very, uh, powerful, uh, German poet, uh, uh, Walter Von Vogel Vader, who was from the chiro era of Germany and was one of the very early, uh, poets who opted for, uh, using the German language in, in place of Latin, who opted for having an independent German spirit, uh, as against the kind of overwhelming, uh, [inaudible] structure that was in religion. So Walter van Vogel, we day, he has represented in the Maestro singers of Nuremberg. And in fact, uh, uh, Wagner lovers had made sure that a statue to him was raised in 1877, uh, uh, in his, uh, home region, monies were made available from one of the, uh, um, bedroom, uh, concert.
(39:32):
The Meister singers in the opera are 12 and number. And in fact, they are historical figures who lived at this time. And their basic consideration was that there were definite rules to be followed in the art of singing. And that flaws in singing should be pointed out. And those who carried flaws into the musical structure should be exempted from participating in the concerts of the Meister singer. The reason for this being the sacredness of the art was an exacting spiritual experience that needed to be carried through for the good of the people that their independence as political, uh, subjects, their, uh, health as social, um, personages, their ability to function as human beings was all dependent upon the purity of the language, the beauty of the singing. And you can see this fit in tremendously with the way in which Wagner was struggling mightily during the 1850s and XL to bring all these problems together and find an expressive form to float every one of the problems and bring them to an integration.
(41:01):
Desolving the erotic and projecting the odd GAAP pay became for him the breaking point of human reality. And when he finished the Meister singers, he couldn't go on with Sid free. He was seized with the vision of the old classical wow, from the middle ages about Tristan and Isolde. And so Wagner from 1856 to 1859, poured himself into one of the great works of the human spirit. And when he finished Tristan and his soldier, he just bared of it ever being performed because it required of the singers, a level of professionalism that simply was not available in Europe. At that time, it required a sense of orchestration and conducting that simply was not available. He produced. In other words, if we can use the term opera, we better use musical drama, work of art. He produced a work of art that transcended the capacity of the time to produce Wagner at this time had found himself increasingly estranged from his wife with Amina.
(42:29):
You found himself involved in infatuation with, uh, a woman named Matilda. He found himself suddenly at the age of 51 penniless without friends, without much hope of going on. And then a miracle happened when Liz had performed Lohengrin in the audience with the young 16 year old man who would become King mood VIG, the second of Bavaria. And when he ascended to the throne in Bavaria, he realized that he has hero Wagner was languishing, this great musical genius lewd VIG had as a, an adolescent had, had built for him a huge pond where he would dress up as the Swan night lo and grin. And he would have mechanical swans pull his boat across this pond, and he would try his best to sing some of the Arias from Lohengrin. And when he realized that Wagner was in terrible straits, he sent his personal secretary with a brief message, come and finish your work. And then it was a promise of a stipend, uh, and Wagner excepted. And so Wagner came back out of exile and, uh, went to Munich. And for the next long while.

END OF SIDE ONE

(00:00):
King lewd Vic. The second was his patron Wagner then was able to return to the problem that he had set aside. He had despaired of ever being able to complete the rank. Now he returned, he had finished Tristan and Isolde. He had finished the Meister singers Nurenberg and finished long sense. Uh, the first two operas in the ring. Now he set himself to sick free. When we listened to SIG afraid, we must also listen to the fourth opera, got her dumb or wrong at the same time. That is to say those two operas were composed together just as the first two [inaudible] and us Ryan gold had been produced together. So that actually the ring cycle is produced in pairs almost in resonant, uh, pairs. When we listen to the forest murmurings of sick freed, and then sick Freed's funeral March, we noticed a tremendous line building.
(01:21):
The land is one of moving from the natural realm in the forest. Murmurings one has the sense almost of a work, even more delightful than Beethoven's pastoral symphony. The sixth symphony, uh, tremendous, uh, vistas of the natural world open up. But the natural world is carved up by Matt, not so much by man, but by a mythological map, incised into man's heritage. So deeply that it is unconscious man in the ring cycle, I simply disclosed that the gods have long sentence played a complicated game, and that the hero Siegfried is actually the grandson of low town. And that in fact, Motown has played a tremendous risky game and has come up on the short side of reality, even for the God he is doomed and all Valhalla are doomed. Bolt-on who has power in the ring cycle is inherent in his spear and on his spear, which is made out of the world.
(02:48):
Ash, the world tree are engraved magical ruins, and these ruins spell they chant of power of Wolf time, which in his involvement in the world, his spear is like the magical wand of magical charm. And what it stirs up is the world of erotic involvement, Siegfried, who is his grandson. His father died defending his mother who was also his sister and his mother died leaving him in charge of a dwarf named mine. And mine was the brother of another dwarf Albrecht. And it was this dwarf that originally had taken the gold of the Rhine maidens and had fashioned a secret ring. And it fashioned a S a helmet, a golden helmet, which when put on, would allow one to change shape, become invisible. The ring itself was a ring of power. The ring is not only a ring for fingers. The ring is the measuring diameter of wartime spear, and it is a ring of power because it is able to play out the language of the magical world incantation and all of its erotic development.
(04:29):
So that the ring is the key, the calipers to the world of phenomenal complication. And all of the gods have always looked to the world of phenomenal things. Well, town's always been in trends with playing with the ladies with involving the gods with men, and this is how the complications have come out, but Wagner, inside of himself in possession of a new vision of man, a vision of purity and transcendence, where a passion becomes compassion, where this world is illusion and should be rejected and dissolved. So that man may free himself from its complications may learn to purify himself through the flames of the erotic involvement, conjured up by the magic of the gods so that the ultimate solving of man's problems is actually the dissolving of the whole Pantheon of his gods. It is the gods who must go for a man to be liberated.
(05:47):
And so seek free part man part God, the hero for whom fear has no meaning who in his [inaudible] has never experienced a fear. He has a pet bear that he walks around on a chain. He wants a sword fashion so that he can go out and have nightly adventures. And every time mine, they never lung a dwarf fashions of sorts, sick fridge, shatters it on the anvil and then sensing in his, uh, boisterous, uh, boyish, uh, power and facility. And I have a T that the Netherlands has lied to him about his heritage. Finally forces out of him. The fact of who his mother was, who his father was, and that his mother had saved the shattered sword of her brother, husband, which had been shattered, not slaying fo, but by Wolf Chan coming in and putting his world spear into shatter the blade involving himself yet again in the affairs of man changing history, changing involvement.
(07:04):
And so the shards are left there, mine, the brother, the maker of the ring cannot put this sword back together. So Siegfried and his navety and his devotion to transcendental, uh, capacity G files, the shattered pieces of metal and under direction of mine and learns how to, uh, Neil it and put it together. And he makes the sword again, no thumb, which is able to shatter the anvil, cut it in two is what happens on stage. Then he holds this up and the image of holding it up in Wagner, his musical imagination in his religious symbolism is that what Siegfried holds up is not so much just a sword out of uncanny steel, but is a bowl lightning. It is pure light. Yeah. Refined into energy before it has become formed. So that Siegfried welds energy prime Orgill, before it has involved itself in the phenomenal world, he is of that elk.
(08:21):
He recovers the ring and the helmet and the adventure of doing this in Dallas, uh, got her done during the Twilight of the gods. He becomes involved with a humming lesson to himself before he is able to slay they dragon, which was a giant name [inaudible] who had transformed himself into a dragon. He is biding his time in front of this cave mouth. And he has a contemplating his sword it's capacity, his capacity. And he notices because he has naturally alert that he hears the bird saying, but can not understand the bird songs. And this is where the, uh, theme of the Meister singers comes back in. This is where the theme of Wagner his own capacity comes back yet. He wonders why he cannot understand the bird songs after he kills the dragon and returns with the ring and the helmet. Okay. He is able to understand the birds and the birds tell him now that he can understand their language, that this isn't a cursed brain, but the whole involvement with the phenomenal realm with gods and men and magic and things has produced an insoluble tangle that no matter what happens, it will go on unless the entire entourage of events is ended.
(10:03):
Siegfried. Then as the rail chiro is told by one of the birds, that there is a woman for him who is important to his destiny, she was once a Valkyrie. Her name is Brunhilda, and the Valkyrie are where eight daughters of [inaudible] and the earth goddess or die. And these eight sisters would ride down into battle and what take the dead bodies of the slain warriors and take them up to Valhalla. And they would be magically brought back to life, sort of like, uh, um, magical zombies in a way. And they're involved Hala. They would constantly hone their killing instincts by slaying each other. And then their wounds would be magically healed. And all of this was to build up an army for tans to protect himself. In other words, he was incorporating the phenomenal world more and more into the realm of the gods to Ford, him fortify himself against his prophesied demise and all the wives, the hair trigger on the entire events with Brown duck and his grandson Siegfried who had recovered the, or the lightening energy and the courage to use it and Wilton and got her Dahmer wrong in the Twilight of the gods does not appear as Woolton, but in disguise as the wanderer, somewhat of amend ticket, hooded figure, capable of telling rentals, capable of going to all the different aspects, all the different, uh, actors in the musical drama, trying to keep track and control of it.
(12:03):
But when he pulls his world, Ash spear out to save himself against this vengeance grandson, his spear is cut up and shattered by the lightning transcendental energy of SIG frayed in his purity. And Wotan flees back to Valhalla and realizes that his day is done. That is the Twilight of the gods and the shattered remnants of the world tree that had been fashioned into a spear with magical ruins to allow him to have a magic wand of war and power and arrows to stir up the phenomenal world are now the faggots to act as the, um, sticks that will burn him in his final Pyre. Siegfried has rescued Brunhilda from a circle, a wicket of flames, one of the vol Valkyries, and she falling deeply in love with Siegfried tells him that she will wait for him because he knows that he has an adventure he has to go to.
(13:19):
He goes off on his adventure and in his adventure, he has administered a potion of magic potion by a woman. And he forgets about Brunhilda becomes involved with her. And the upshot in the Twilight of the gods is that Siegfried is killed doing Hilda realizing too late, that he had been given a potion, that it was the last complication of the magical God realm in human affairs decides to join him in death, on the funeral Pyre, and as Montan burns in Valhalla, Siegfried, and Brunhilda burn in the phenomenal realm and the entire complication of the realm of the gods and arrows goes up in flames. All of this was produced at a theater, specially built for it in Barrow little town in Germany. Okay. They built the theater, especially to produce the ring. I don't have time to go into all the biographical details of vokner. He had fallen in love with, uh, Cosima who was friend's list daughter. She was married to Han spawn doula, who was the conductor of the ring cycle. One of the first really great Wagner conductors. She and a Wagner were eventually married and they had children. One of them was named Siegfried.
(14:56):
Wagner became a spectacular cultural hero, not only for the German race, but for the entire European psyche for the 19th century, Wagner became what toll star would become near the end of his life. He became the most famous man in Europe towards the end of his life, Bogner realizing the tremendous capacity, which he's engender devoted himself to a theme, which he had thought of as an adolescent. And now came back up the great poem of Wolfram fun. I shouldn't Bach parse of all and Wagner devoted the last couple of years of his life to producing one of the really great transcendent works of the human spirit or work that belongs like Beethoven's ninth to any civilized person in any era of the world's history, in the parts of all, if one would only play for oneself, the difference between the overture to the parse of all and the overture to say something like, uh, Lohengrin you will find for yourself a tremendous jump in capacity.
(16:22):
A difference in intent. There is a transition though, and the transition is identifiable in this way. If one goes to Tristan and Isolde to the poignant, leave bestowed the love death theme and play that out and then play the overture to parse of all immediately after it. One sees the transition from Tristan and Isolde with the poignancy of love, death, air OSS, phenomenal death, and the way in which parts of all lifts cleanly off the map of the phenomenal world as if it were just an illusion and flies in the melodic line, into the dramatic structure of the parcel. So that parse of all as a work becomes more and more a shimmering scheme of abstract movements that finally take the experience of the listener away from him, self herself as a phenomenal body. And Positas into an eternal realm. It was said at one time, all of the parts of all in the introduction by a grouper written in 1896, this opera, which Bogner himself called a religious drama is intended as the song of songs of divine love as Tristan and Isolde is the song of songs of terrestrial love.
(18:15):
The performance was repeated 16 times at Beirut where many people had come from all parts of the world to hear and see it. And has since been revived a number of times, it is the most difficult and least easily understood. And the masters intricate works and bears the imprint, not only of his philosophic studies, but also of the spirit of Oriental mysticism and what she delighted in which he, at one time intended to make use for the stage. In fact, the theme of the Holy grail, they came for Wagner the last work for the phenomenal realm that he would write. He projected a Buddhist musical drama called the victors, but left only the sketches. He died months after parts of all was staged and did not live to complete what have been the sequel to it. A Buddhist musical drama called the victors. Well, you're beginning to see that the subtitle of the course, a journey into the permanently desolving reality is a very apt way of describing the 19th century. I think that's all for tonight, Both.

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